


feel it still

by Ejunkiet (orphan_account), evil bunny wolf (evil_bunny_king)



Category: Daredevil (TV), The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: F/M, Post-Episode: s01e08 The Defenders, duct tape and ambiguous phone calls, poorly stocked first aid kits
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-23
Updated: 2017-11-11
Packaged: 2019-01-22 01:35:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,470
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12470544
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/Ejunkiet, https://archiveofourown.org/users/evil_bunny_king/pseuds/evil%20bunny%20wolf
Summary: Karen’s legs are unsteady as she makes her way to the bathroom to knock on the door, fingers curling against the wood as she hears the water stop, before Frank's voice croaks through the door. "What is it?"She has to swallow twice before she can get the words out. "Someone knows you’re here.”





	1. part one

**Author's Note:**

> I'm back! Sort of. Maybe. This will be a collaborative effort with the wonderful devilbunnyking as we shake the dust off our keyboards and get back to writing about Karen and Frank. God, I love these two.

Her work phone is ringing.

Karen doesn’t answer it immediately. Nobody should have this number aside from Ellison, but she can see him across the room now, talking to the copy editor about this evening’s edition, and there’s no sign of a handset anywhere near him. She’d only been assigned this extension a few days ago, and she was planning on passing it onto Foggy when they met up for drinks tomorrow night.

The phone rings out for another few moments before she reaches over and picks up the handset, taking a breath before she says, “You’ve reached Karen Page of the Bulletin.”

There’s silence on the other end of the line, unresponsive even when she tries again. “Hello? This is Karen Page of the Bulletin. Is anyone there?”

She’s a second away from hanging up when there’s a crackle from the handset, and a slow, shaky exhale comes down the line. Before she has the chance to question the caller again, a hoarse whisper breaks the silence and says, “Your place. Twenty minutes.”

He hangs up.

She keeps looking at the phone long after the dial tone has taken over the line. That was Frank; there was no mistaking his voice, even if it had been over a month since she had last heard from him. She doesn’t know how he’d managed to get this number, but she knew he’d never use it unless he had to – unless something had happened.

Glancing at the clock, she drafts a brief email to Ellison explaining that she will be working at home for the rest of the day, and packs her laptop into her bag.

She’s out the front door in less than five minutes.

\--

Twenty minutes later finds her stuck in traffic. The lunch hour rush has hit New York, slowing progress down to a crawl until she's tempted to just pull over and make the rest of the way on foot. It'd definitely be faster, but she wouldn't risk the car, her last lingering memory of Ben Ulrich. (After all it's gone through, she doubts the city would even bother with a tow - they'd have it crushed down into a cube before she could get to the impound lot fast enough to stop them.)

Somewhere between West 36th and 37th street she switches on the radio, drumming her fingers along with the beat of the current top ten Pop hits. She tries not to think about what's waiting for her at home, the state Frank's in, or how if he’s reaching out to her like this, it means that something has gone seriously wrong.

The midday traffic inches forward slowly. She’s half-heartedly humming to one of the songs when it ends abruptly, the station's DJ interrupting with an update of the local news. She’s reaches out to switch the frequency or maybe put in a tape before pausing, resting her hand on the dash.  After a moment of deliberation, she turns up the volume instead.

_“…seems as if trouble is brewing in Hell’s Kitchen, with rumours of an altercation between members of the Defenders and a local cartel, resulting in ten dead and another twenty injured. More on this story as it develops! Now, the evening promises to be HOT, so be sure to wear your-”_

The radio crackles as she switches off the receiver and steers her car out of the traffic, pulling into a nearby open parking space – although how she manages to do all that, she’s not sure, as she’s not really paying attention to the road, too focused on the words of the all-too brief news report.

It's not the activities of the newly formed vigilante group that catches her attention, it's the death count. This was a group of people who'd made sure to emphasize that their mission was to preserve life, not take it, and while there had been casualties over the last few months, the incidents had been few and far between, barely more than a handful in total.

The unintended deaths suggested that there was more to the story. That _Frank_ had been there, and the situation had gone south – far south enough, in fact, that he’d had to employ lethal tactics.

Her fingers clench knuckle-white around the steering wheel as she glances down at the time blinking at her from her stereo. Her twenty minutes are up, but she’s not far now – less than a ten minute walk. Travelling on foot would be faster – and so she makes another snap decision.

Putting the car into park and throwing some coins into the meter, she leaves her car on the street and makes her way down past the last few blocks to her apartment.

\--

Her keys are rattling in her grip as she uses them to unlock the front door, but whether her hands are shaking with the stress of this or with nerves, she can’t tell. She doesn’t know what she’s going to find when she makes it into the apartment, if he will even be _alone_ , and Jesus, she hadn’t even considered the possibility that someone else could be with him.

She’s prepared for just about anything by the time she finally gets the door open and ducks into the room, eyes glancing over the corners, the kitchen, until – she sees him.

Frank is crouched in the corner of her apartment by the window, propped up haphazardly against the frame, the scope of his M40 rifle resting in his lap. His eyes are closed when she turns to lock the door behind her, but they crack open as she deposits her keys into the bowl by the door, and something about the delay in the reaction time sends her heart thrumming within her chest, vibrating throughout her rib cage.

He greets her then, his voice deeper and rougher than usual, as if he’d spent the morning chewing on gravel. “Ma’am.”

Frank looks – tired. There's some faint bruising darkening the edges of his jaw and a long scratch that trails along his cheek, dangerously close to an eye, but there's nothing readily apparent that provides an explanation for why he's here.

She takes another step into her living room, casting a glance around her. Nothing strikes her as out of the ordinary – the room is cluttered but tidy, books and case files littering the available surfaces, the notes from her latest article piled into neat stacks on the table.

Frank’s breathing is fast and shallow, one arm cradling his chest as if he was supporting his ribs – and if that was the case, then he really should be at a _hospital_ , not crashing on the floor of her apartment, where the best medical expertise she can provide him is a poorly stocked first aid kit.

“Frank, what-”

He raises a hand and she pauses, watching the way he works his throat until he can swallow and croak out the question, "Are you alone?"

She nods and he looks at her, assessing, before some of the tension seeps out of his shoulders.

“Good.”

Her eyes flicker to the window, the busted lock, the scuffs on the sill, before returning back to Frank. She opens her mouth with every intention of asking him just what exactly he thought he was doing here, but what comes out is, “how can I help?”

"I need your help - binding _this_ ," he gestures in the general vicinity of his chest. "S'two person job. Don't have - much time."

She closes the distance between them as he pushes away from the wall, grunting as he reaches an arm behind himself and drags out a white tackle box that she doesn’t recognise. He opens the clasps with shaking fingers and flips the lid to reveal the contents: a roll of duct tape, several packets of sterile bandages and gauze, and a construction grade staple gun.

Frank grabs the bandages and gauze, dropping them into his lab before retrieving the duct tape.

“Are you ready?”

\--

Sometime later, Karen receives a message from an unknown number.

IS FRANK THERE

A beat passes before her phone vibrates again, twice, in quick succession.

KAREN

IS FRANK WITH YOU 

Karen’s legs are unsteady as she makes her way to the bathroom to knock on the door, fingers curling against the wood as she hears the water stop, before Frank's voice croaks through the door. "What is it?"

She has to swallow twice before she can get the words out. "Someone knows you’re here.”

There's a moment of silence before she hears heavy steps coming towards the door, and she takes a step back as Frank swings the door open. His hair is wet, rivulets of water trickling down his temple as he glances between her and the outstretched phone, just as it vibrates with another message.

WE'RE COMING TO YOU


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> His dog tags glint in the tacky yellow fluorescence of the overhead light, little windows of light that glance off the scars that line his torso. It’s a monument to his misdemeanours, his work of the last six months. She’s written about only a fraction of them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is legit a collab, we traded this over email as we're both rusty as hell. Next chapter will be updated in the next week if you can guess who wrote what.

The heat leans in, making her slow, making her clumsy, fingers slick as she unravels the bandage. Heat pressing against the windows, swelling the walls, until she feels like they're being squeezed.

She feels his heartbeat under her fingers, steady and slow, burning life through the bandage.

He’s looking at her out of the side of his eye. He’s not looking at her at all.

He's got his bad arm crooked against the wall, levering him forward as she reaches around him – her cheek pressing to his shoulder, damp with his sweat, too hot and shaking when he breathes.

“What happened,” she whispers, easier now he can’t see her, because of course she asks.

She's not good at silences. He isn't either - she feels it like a physical thing, stalled in the air between them – there’s silence and then there’s this, the weight of the unsaid, what they’re expecting and avoiding. She asks for him, and for the whats and whys, a reporter’s itch. Because she's a reporter now and knowledge **is** power, even when it can't be used, only kept.

“What happened,” she tries again, and draws back up, bandage in hand. “What went wrong? How many were there?”

His head tilts, his eyes heavy lidded and half-closed and then creasing in a frown. “They had company,” he says at last. “The company, they had company, shit, you couldn’t write that.”

He chokes a laugh and she brings the bandage around, taut, against his exhale. He hisses in a breath.

“The Defenders-?”

“Sure.”

“And?”

He’s not really answering anymore, though. His wandering gaze finds her and fixes with a kind of fever intensity, staying until she looks his way. She’s not quite sure what he’s thinking.

“Reckon it’s tight enough,” he says after a breath.

He moves then, reaching with his free hand to the floor beside him, fumbling in the dark, and hands her something. She takes it before she realises what it is. The duct tape.

“Really, Frank?”

He makes the mistake of laughing, a quick pained sound, but she agrees to use it to keep the bandages tight. It’s as ridiculous as it feels. She’s chasing bruises like coloured shadows, not quite able to blot them out.

Once she’s checked that the bandages will hold, she helps Frank to his feet and they take the slow, stumbling route to the bathroom. Together, they remove his shoes and the stained remnants of his undershirt, leaving his dark cargo pants.

He grips the rail that lines the shower and lets out a long, slow breath before he pulls himself in. She waits until she’s sure he’s stable, eyeing the tremor in his arm that threatens to swallow the entire limb, before pulling out the extendable shower head and crouching down to twist on the water, feeling out the temperature as the boiler rumbles to life a floor above.

There’s a light touch on her shoulder, and she glances up to find Frank’s gaze on her.

“Karen.”

There’s a wry twist to Frank’s lips from where he leans heavily against the shower rail, and she realises she’s still here.

His dog tags glint in the tacky yellow fluorescence of the overhead light, little windows of light that glance off the scars that line his torso. It’s a monument to his misdemeanours, his work of the last six months. She’s written about only a fraction of them.

“Go. Think I’ve asked enough of you tonight.”

She clicks the door closed and hears the showerhead hum to life, drumming into the bathtub.

 

\--

 

WE'RE COMING TO YOU

Frank takes the phone and flicks to the caller ID before disappearing back into the bathroom, and then Karen goes for her gun.

 “We gotta go,” he says from somewhere behind her, as she fumbles through her nightstand for the .380. But it’s not there- it’s in her purse, shit, dropped too close to the door and therefore out of reach - and so she reaches for the next closest thing instead, wrapping her finger reassuringly around something approximating a trigger.

The doorknob shakes, and then twists, and then crunches as the door swings open-

Karen levels a staple gun at Jessica fucking Jones.

“The fuck are you doing,” Jessica says, staring openly at the staple gun.

It’s not the first thing Karen thought she’d hear from Jessica Jones after Midland Circle. There were a lot of things, words, that she’d wanted to say, but all she can do is drop the staple gun to her side, as if the fight’s washed out of her.

She feels Frank step up beside her, warm and damp at her side, his hands wrapped securely around a .9mm, a coil of tightly wound tension, poised and ready to spring.

His voice is barely more than a rasp when he speaks, although it’s a damn sight better than earlier. “Jessica.”

Cracking her knuckles, Jessica takes the step from the hallway into Karen’s apartment, dark gaze alert as she glances over the room before finally focusing on Frank. “What are you doing here, Frank?”

“I could ask you the same question.”

“Last time I checked, this was Page’s apartment.” She inclines her head and Karen suddenly feels the weight of the staple gun again, ready in her hand. She shakes off the thought. Frank doesn’t move.

“You should leave.”

“Yeah, you don’t get to tell me what the fuck to do, skull boy. Put the toy down, before you do something you’ll regret.”

A long, deliberate second, where Frank stares down the sight of his pistol, before he holsters it and lower his hands, placing his palms flat against his thighs.

“Alright, alright” he says, as steady as she remembers, although she’s close enough this time to see the flutter of his fingers. “What do you want, Jones?”

“To talk.” Jessica puts her hands up, takes another step into the apartment, and kicks the door shut behind her. “That’s all.”

To Karen, who’s still holding the staple gun. “You got anything to drink?”


End file.
